It would appear on close inspection that although the calendar says fall the weather in Northern California around the first week of November is downright summery. It happened twice in a row. Last year this time it was equally beautiful - I know because we were here. And so on in the past few.
It was quite the Twain's Quip (About the Coldest Winter) altering weekend this one!
This Saturday was 72 degrees in the City by the Bay and the skies were a perfect azure. Since the remainder of the family is out of town traveling I decided to satiate my hiking bug by suiting up and traversing some trails I had in mind to trample.
So I started out on the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula and hiked along its north - NW edge up and down (both in distance and elevation). After coming up from the beaches of Crissy Field (named after a WWI Major and the fact that it was an airfield in the day) I hiked up the hills to reach the 75 year anniversary celebrating Golden Gate Bridge.
It was fun to see the new artefacts being sold in the Bridge House to tourists from all over the world. The steps leading up to the Viewing Gallery showcase the Welcome sign in 20 odd languages from the world.
Deciding to follow the tourists (by becoming one in spirit) I completed a walk across the 4,200 feet span taking pictures galore.
Waved to double deckers passing by with gawking foreigners (much like what we would have looked like in Paris atop an open air double deck affair).
Its amazing how few people from the local neighborhoods actually take time to visit what is in their backyard but will shell out thousands to see someone else's coast.
Like many top tier coastal cities SF is beautiful on a day like yesterday - mild, breezy and the Sun on Full with few wisps of clouds dotting the Marin Headlands to the north. After that bridge crossing it was time for some nutrition that came in the form of some Vietnamese Pho (soup) that I happened on as I walked into Golden Gate park and out the other end.
I am hoping to shed some weight and light on my physical attributes but with the gusto that follows (at the lunch table) the back breaking journey I think the best takeaway may be the memories and pictures.
This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...
Without the traffic, many of our cities would actually look great! I missed out on SF, during my round-the-US yatras. Oh, well, I did go to Yellowstone!
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